


The Adventure Of The Millennium Falcon (1899)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [180]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Star Wars - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Attempted Murder, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Gay Sex, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Murder, Star Wars References, Threats, Trains, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 16:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11627196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: Events conspire to drive Sherlock and John from Baker Street – but their temporary refuge, a mysterious underground bunker at a secret location in the North of England, has its own dangers.





	The Adventure Of The Millennium Falcon (1899)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MelodyofWings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodyofWings/gifts).



> Mentioned elsewhere as 'the killing of Perkins'.

In my first “Elementary” fifteen years ago (1921), I mentioned that as well as the three places in which Sherlock and I lived together – Montague Street, Cramer Street and of course our beloved Baker Street – one of our cases was solved whilst moving between the latter two, during which time I had had to take lodgings in Dorset Street whilst poor Sherlock had to move in with his family for a time (I still recall the epic eye-roll!). As I said, I did not count Dorset Street as our fourth (or third) home, because only I lived there. There were of course all sorts of places at which we stayed briefly to solve individual cases, and there were our two stays on Futility Island, but there was also one case where we actually resided for a whole two months during one of the most bizarre cases that the two of us have ever come across. Even reading of the events which I know actually happened during that fateful (and nearly fatal) year of 'Ninety-Nine, I still find them hard to believe. But a dead body is a pretty convincing proof that they did.

+~+~+

Our unwanted departure from Baker Street came about courtesy of the Metropolitan Railway Company, who ran its trains through Baker Street Station and along the tracks behind our Georgian home. As I have mentioned elsewhere, at time that we first came to the area (1883) the station was relatively quiet, but the steady growth of the capital had led to an increase in trains and, of course, noise. Six years before this story is set, the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Company had been founded to connect our station to the London and South Western Railway's terminus, although various delays would mean that the line would not actually open until 1906, by which time..... things would have changed.

The next station north from Baker Street, St. John's Wood Road, was close to the famous Lord's cricket ground, and about the only times that we really noticed the railway's existence was during important cricket matches when the number of trains would increase sharply. Our house shared a narrow back-area (I did not think that two wilting potted plants and a rusty bench counted as 'a garden') with the adjoining parts of the former Glendower Mansion, and we rarely ventured out that way, although there was a footbridge across the railway to Regent's Park which had proved useful from time to time when certain guests had needed to leave 221B without being seen by someone watching from the front.

Unfortunately, on this particular Guy Fawkes' Night, one of the Metropolitan Railway's trains decided to come to us! For some unknown reason it left the tracks and, although it fortunately managed to remain upright, demolished a significant portion of the retaining wall which had marked the boundary of the railway. I am only grateful that, by the Grace of God, there were no fatalities even if there were many injuries, but the accident would turn out to have major repercussions for Sherlock and myself.

221B was, as I have said before, the right-hand or southernmost of the three houses into which the original Glendower Mansion had been divided many years before. There was an alleyway between us and number 223 – and unhappily, as it was the largest alleyway on that side of the street, it was the one that the railway companies decided to use to get some of their men and equipment to the repair site. How they managed to make so much more noise than an electric railway train I do not know, but working and living in the house rapidly became intolerable. So when Sherlock received a request some two days after they had started to go and investigate a case far out into the country, it seemed like Providence.

One of these days.... one of these days, I would know better.

+~+~+

I cannot reveal the exact location of our destination, as it subsequently was acquired by the government for reasons I know not, but I will say that we took the Great Northern Railway out of King's Cross Station, changing over to the North Eastern at Doncaster. We alighted at Durham Station, and it took two more trains and a horse ride to reach our destination. Which, apparently, was a wood.

“Lebanon Wood”, Sherlock said, as if taking one's lover out into the middle of absolutely nowhere was normal. I looked at the frankly forbidding dense woodland in front of me. The thought, quite unbidden, rose in me that he could bury my body out here, and almost certainly no-one would ever find me.

I should have mentioned that it was quite cold. That was why I was shivering.

“I can think of better things to do with your body, John!" he growled, showing that he still had that uncanny (and irritating) ability to read my mind. “A Mr. George Lucas requires our attendance in order to, and I quote, 'prevent the end of days'.”

I blinked. Sherlock had been called upon to do many difficult things in his life, but stopping the Apocalypse seemed a bit of a stretch, even for him (though I would not have put it past the little scruff). And why were we visiting someone in the middle of a wood?

The answer, along with why we were on horses rather than in a carriage, came when Sherlock had led me some way into the dark little wood. Although it was still mid-afternoon and a couple of hours until sunset, the trees overhead blocked out most of the light, and I shivered again. There was barely even a path through this place, and the animal noises seemed.....

 _What on earth was_ that?

Right in the middle of the wood, someone had built a large, concrete and indubitably ugly building in a small clearing. The trees still pressed round it, but I could see that the squat single-story structure had a large glass roof in its centre. Where on earth had Sherlock brought me?

“Remember the year.”

The fact that he had somehow got himself and his horse right next to me had escaped my notice, and I may have uttered a noise which some uncharitable observers - especially one with blue eyes and impossible hair - may have defined as a girly shriek (judging from the smirk on someone's face, I probably had). I glared at him.

“What do you mean, the year?” I asked, once I had got my breath back and my heart-rate had returned to normal.

“We are less than two months away from the year 1900”, he reminded me. “Some people, especially given the instability in the world just now, believe that we are approaching the end of days.”

I scoffed at the notion.

“I remember reading that once about the Dark Ages”, I said. “All those people who thought that once the years reached four figures, the world would end. I would wager that they all kept very quiet when 1001 arrived bang on time!”

“The glut of Viking raids around those years was far from nothing”, he countered smoothly. “Our client, Mr. Lucas, is one such who believes that, to quote from his letter, 'the world will be swept clean by the wings of the Millennium Falcon'.”

I stared at him.

“Has he been taking the right tablets?” I asked testily.

“Hence why he has paid to build this place”, Sherlock said, “where he believes that he will be safe from the winged terror set to fall upon Mankind. And by the greatest good fortune, he is prepared to host us here for the month or more that it will take those workmen to either finish their repairs along the back of 221B, or to sufficiently annoy Mrs. Singer that she uses them for target practice.”

I smiled at that image, but I could only imagine that we were going to spend a very uncomfortable time in this tiny little place.

+~+~+

I could not have been more wrong. The single-storey building that was above ground was merely the top-most part of an absolutely massive complex, which seemed to go on forever. It was like a massive hotel had been built into the ground, with only a small roof-section poking up into the wood. 

Our host (and the place was so large, I would not have been surprised had it taken several days for him to find us) was, as Sherlock had said, Mr. George Lucas. He was one of those small nervous fellows who I could imagine easily ending up as a hen-pecked husband, doing everything that his wife told him to.....

I could almost hear the smirk from someone in the vicinity, who was not getting laid (or doing any laying) any time in the near future. Bastard!

The one curious thing about Mr. Lucas - yes, apart from the small, almost insignificant detail that he lived in a giant hole in the ground - was that he had an American accent. He told us several times (and the Good Lord alone knows how I kept a straight face) that 'the great Millennium Falcon would descend from the skies and sweep the earth'. This, he said, was due to the assassination two millennia ago of one of the Egyptian Cleopatras, who had been murdered and, in her dying breath, had invoked a terrible curse on humanity. I wondered why the dear old queen had decided to give people two thousands years to make the current mess of things, but was too polite to comment.

Our host had been alerted to the forthcoming apocalypse by a seer in his homeland (I forbore from asking if the seer had seen him coming!), who had explained that only those beneath the ground would be spared. Mr. Lucas had therefore used his not inconsiderable wealth to come to England and build this place, where he would wait out the end of days. I did of course wonder why he had not had the place built in the United States, but he explained that the seer had already built his own shelter there – which, I was not surprised to learn, Mr. Lucas had paid for the expansion of – somewhere in the west of that fateful state of Kansas ironically enough, and that the Millennium Falcon would be angered if there was more than one such place per continent. I also wondered as to precisely which Caribbean island that seer was currently sunning himself on, having doubtless sold his underground retreat for a handsome profit.

Sherlock was looking at me again!

Our host further explained that his current fears concerned his family, and in particular his wife. Incredibly, the building of this place had made barely a dent in his huge wealth, and Mrs. Lucas, who had refused to leave her homeland, was angry that he was being what she termed 'unreasonable' (I myself would have used a less polite word). Because the oldest of their children was but ten years of age, she would by the laws of her homeland be able to assume control of the estate in their name 'if anything happened to her husband'. And by one of those wonderful coincidences which always seemed to bedevil such cases, she was an excellent shot.

+~+~+

One of my favourite parts of this bunker was the electrical warning systems that our host had had installed. The place was divided into sixteen sections, and if anyone entered a section, then a red light would come on in all the rooms in it and flash. This was a wise precaution, as it meant that even had our host wandered into Section 12 where we were staying, we would have had enough warning of his approach to make ourselves decent. Or at least I would; Sherlock always looked irritatingly unruffled after I had thrown everything that I had into rocking his world, damn him!

“I contacted Luke before we left”, he told me, as we lay together the morning after our arrival. “He is still checking out our host's story, but so far what he told us appears to be true. Mrs. Lucas is, to put it politely, a trifle unbalanced.....”

“I would wager that it is less trifle, and more nutty as a fruit-cake”, I cut in. He smiled.

“More worryingly, she has recently moved her family to live just outside the port of Boston”, he said, “where she is but a ship's journey away from England. And her errant husband.”

“What is this lady's name?” I asked. 

“Carrie”, he said, “but in line with his apocalyptic predictions, her husband insists on calling her 'Leia'. And he believes that after the Falcon has brought about the end of days, he himself will be known as 'Han-who-walks-solo.”

“I am glad that I brought my gun!” I said shortly.

+~+~+

It was actually quite nice living in the bunker for a change, although I doubted that I would wish to live there permanently. Mr. Lucas had employed a local company to deliver food supplies to a cottage that stood on the nearest road, over half a mile away, so there were frequent supplies of coffee and bacon, or life would have been intolerable for someone. I wondered how, if he was so afraid of ether his wife or this damn bird, he got the supplies from the cottage, but it turned out that his servants lived in the cottage, and that it had an underground connection to the bunker. The servants all had cards which enabled them to gain access to various parts of the complex to clean it, and there was some sort of code system on the doors to stop anyone else getting in. I also discovered that what I had thought was a chimney at the back was in fact a small observation post which enabled our host to view all the deliveries to the cottage, as well as the countryside for miles around.

All right, we were living with a madman, but at least it was comfortable.

+~+~+

Our quiet times came to an end just before the end of the month, when amongst the groceries there was a telegram from Mr. Lucius Holmes. The previous week, Mrs. Lucas had left Boston for England. And before leaving, she had purchased a brand-new pearl-handled revolver. Mr. Lucas nearly threw a fit.

“Calm down, sir!” Sherlock said firmly, if a little grumpily. The delivery that morning had not included his coffee, and whilst there was some left in the bunker – the food supplies here would have lasted for several years at a stretch, but it was our bad luck that our host preferred tea – he had been annoyed. “The lady is hardly likely to be able to get past the first line of your defences in this fortress.”

“You do not know Leia!” he moaned (I rolled my eyes at the awful name; what sort of lady would ever want to be called that?). “She will find a way! The woman is unstoppable. That is it; I am sealing the door and never going out again!”

I should have mentioned that our host had a dog, a large hearth-rug of indefinite breeding that he called Chewbacca. He himself usually walked the beast to the nearby village where there was a post office, which I supposed was necessary as he needed to maintain some contact with the outside world to manage his finances (he of course insisted that one of the servants man the observation tower all the time he was away). Sherlock and I had gone down to the village the week before, and had found it frankly uninspiring. The baker's shop there did not even sell pie!

“My brother Luke will have men watching your wife from the moment she makes landfall in this country”, Sherlock reassured our host. “She will not be able to do anything without his knowledge.”

+~+~+

Unfortunately, it seemed that for once Sherlock had overestimated his brother's abilities. Mrs. Lucas arrived to the port of Plymouth and took the express to London, closely followed by two of Mr. Lucius Holmes' men. However, she managed to give them the slip by the clever ruse of choosing a compartment where there was a lady of similar appearance to herself, then persuading the other lady that she was desperate to shake off the pursuit of a violent husband bitter at her being granted a divorce. The other lady had, for a sizeable sum of money, agreed to exchange coats and don a wig, then to alight at Exeter, hurry into the town and book herself into a hotel in Mrs. Lucas' name for the night, resuming her journey the following day. By the time that the deception had been detected, our host's wife had vanished.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Lucas went ballistic at the news.

“It is just as Obi predicted!” he yelled when told the news.

“Obi who?” I asked.

“Obi-one-who-knows-all”, he said bitterly. “My seer's father. He said that the Millennium Falcon would bring destruction in its wake, and that Luke-who-walks-the-sky would not be able to save me! That must be your brother Lucius, Mr. Holmes. I am doomed!”

Years of dealing with 'difficult' patients stood me in good stead at this moment in my life, but even so, my eyes watered with the effort of not laughing. And I could feel Sherlock wanting to roll his eyes at the 'man' before us.

“I am sure that Luke-who.... my brother will be able to find her soon enough”, he said. “And since she has gone to London, that implies that she does not know where you are.”

“Sir?” 

Our host was confused which, I guessed, had been Sherlock's intention. At least it temporarily put a stop to his witterings.

“Had she known of this place, she could have considerably foreshortened her journey by taking a ship to Liverpool”, Sherlock pointed out. “There is a direct service connecting it to Boston, rather than the route she did take, which was slower as it included a call at Queenstown in Ireland. And there are many different ways to get from that Lancashire port to this county. We will find her, sir, and you will get justice in this matter.”

An odd choice of words, I thought at the time, but as it turned out, more than appropriate.

+~+~+

Sherlock was right in as much that Mrs. Lucas was soon located in London. She was followed down to Queenborough in Kent, opposite Port Victoria where we had solved the 'Baron Maupertuis' Case thirteen (thirteen!) years back, and from there she took the ferry across to Flushing on the Continent. It seemed that she was on the wrong trail – until she immediately re-crossed the North Sea and arrived in Kingston-upon-Hull, less than a hundred miles away from us. Even my friend's infinite patience, I could see, was being stretched by our blabbering host's near-constant panic attacks.

+~+~+

It was by this time only days before Christmas, which irked me somewhat as I was used to marking the festive season by decorating our Baker Street rooms. Large as the bunker was, it was completely sterile, all the rooms painted in a uniform pale cream colour, and I suspected that even a single sprig of holly would stand out like a sore thumb. Besides, a religious maniac like Mr. Lucas was not likely to mark a Christian holiday. And since Sherlock and I had not expected to be away for so long, we had left our presents for each other back in Baker Street, so we did not even have those. The great day would, I thought, be a quiet one.

I was so wrong. A telegram arrived for Sherlock on the day, and he frowned as he read it. We both watched him anxiously.

“It seems that your troubles are over, sir”, he said heavily. “The lady being followed by my brother's agents was tracked to a hotel in the city of Durham yesterday, and was seen making inquiries as to whether you had been in the area.”

I shuddered. We were some way from the great city on the Wear, but Mrs. Lucas seemed to be getting closer and closer.

“However”, Sherlock went on, “it chanced that she then approached one of the agents following her. There was a confrontation, and your wife took out her gun. The agent shot her, purely in self-defence, I should add.” He paused before adding, “I am sorry to inform you that she died almost immediately.”

The man had turned ashen-faced, and he swallowed several times, unable to speak.

“I wish that I did not have to add to your worries”, Sherlock said, “but it is essential that the body be formally identified. Since you are the only one who can do that.....”

“Yes”, our host gulped. “I... suppose that I have to.”

“And then it will all be over”, Sherlock said soothingly.

He shot me a look when I was but half-way through thinking 'what about that bloody bird and the end of times?', which was damnably unfair.

+~+~+

It was three days later, and the three of us had travelled to the city of Durham. Mr. Lucas seemed even smaller, curled up on his side of the compartment, and Sherlock and I were silent. Once at the police station whence the body had been taken, I expected Sherlock to let our host go in and do his duty alone, but to my surprise he remained with him, dragging me along as well. The police doctor nodded to us, and drew back the white cloth covering the body. 

The next few seconds seemed to take an eternity. Mr. Lucas gasped in horror, actually screamed and tried to back away, but only succeeded into running into the wall of solid muscle that was Sherlock. And the sound of his scream was still reverberating when the woman on the table suddenly opened her eyes and slowly sat up. And looked at our client.

And smiled evilly.

“Hullo, Georgie!”

Mr. Lucas fainted.

+~+~+

As our host came round, he first blinked confusedly at us, then tried to sit upright on the bed on which he had been placed, only to realize that he had been handcuffed. And that he was in a prison cell. His confusion very quickly turned to anger.

“Mr. Holmes!” he snapped. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Perkins”, Sherlock said calmly.

The pause was a fraction of a second too long.

“Who is Mr. Perkins?” his captive demanded.

“You are”, Sherlock said dryly. “And you are under arrest for the murder of your wife, done to death some months ago by you, sir, and entombed in the underground bunker of your associate Mr. Darlington Atherstone-Vader. Or as you prefer to call him, 'Darth'.”

I stared at Sherlock in confusion.

“But who was the dead – I mean not dead – lady?” I asked. Sherlock grinned.

“Mr. Perkins here had decided some time ago to rid himself of his wife”, he said. “However, the United States has progressed to the point where divorce is no longer that easy for gentlemen, and they must expect to actually pay a part of their wealth to be free of their obligations. Despite his immense wealth, Mr. Perkins was not minded to pay. Hence he murdered his wife.”

He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that I winced.

“His associate disguises himself as a seer, who seemingly convinces him to flee the country and build a huge bunker complex to wait out the end of days”, Sherlock said. “In fact, the whole thing is a ruse to cover the removal of his wife. I suspected as much early on, sir, and once it was reported that your 'wife' was on her way here, I telegraphed the American police to search Mr. Atherstone-Vader's own bunker. They found your wife's body almost immediately.”

The man behind the bars snarled at him. I found it hard to believe that the timorous, inconsequential man who had been hiding underground all this time was a vicious killer.

“Mr. Atherstone-Vader had cajoled some lady into playing the part of your wife and coming to England”, Sherlock said, “at which event you, seemingly, would grow even more afraid of 'your wife'. The poor girl involved was destined to become the victim that you would then obligingly identify as 'Mrs. Lucas'. Much later, when the Millennium Falcon had for some reason decided not to end the world after all, you would have returned shame-faced to the United States.”

“I allowed Mr. Atherstone-Vader and his accomplice, an innocent Italian lady called Miss Artuditu, to get only as far as Plymouth before having him arrested, and transported back to face justice in his homeland”, Sherlock said calmly. “The lady, after a stern talking-to, was also allowed to return home. All the messages that you have received since that time have been fakes, and I employed the services of a most excellent actress, a Miss Corinne Thripio, who was made up as your dead wife. I decided that you deserved some initial punishment before returning to face justice in your homeland.”

Mr. Perkins surprised me at that point by uttering a string of quite inventive obscenities that I will not repeat here, and we could still hear his screaming as we returned to collect our things from the bunker.

+~+~+

The reader will not be surprised to learn that, contrary to all those predictions, the Millennium Falcon did not swoop down and bring an end to the world that December 31st. Sherlock and I returned to the restored 221B Baker Street, and were able to celebrate a belated Christmas. He gave me a wonderful complete set of Shakespeare's works, something that I had always wanted. And my present to him was a little unusual in that it was something for me to wear. A slave-girl costume.

All things considered, I suppose that the world could have ended that year. I was so blissed out that I doubt that I would have even noticed.

+~+~+

Our next case once more contains an element of the preternatural, and is not as 'simple' as it first seems.


End file.
